People often find themselves in situations where they need or desire information concerning a particular topic. These situations may relate either to work or to leisure activities, but the desired information usually is not readily at hand unless an appropriate book or other information source is available. Although the information may be available from various reference sources such as periodical publications, books, or databases accessible through computers, these sources are not readily portable and in many cases are relatively expensive to purchase and maintain.
Problems associated with providing a convenient source of information on a selected topic are even greater where the information source should be readily portable, that is, sufficiently compact in size and weight so that a person will want to carry it with him or her. Regular hardback bound books are out of the question in most cases, due to the weight and bulk of such books. Even paperback books, although somewhat more convenient to carry than their hardback counterparts, usually do not fit conveniently within a person's pockets, and must instead be carried in a knapsack or some other carrier borne by the individual. Moreover, the bulk and space requirements of conventional bookbinding reduce the amount of information each page can display, and add to the number of pages required for a given amount of information, a significant factor for a portable or easily-carried compendium of information. Moreover, the very nature of bound books makes these books relatively inconvenient or expensive to modify as the information on a few pages is changed from time to time, and the conventional looseleaf alternative to binding usually adds to the weight and physical bulk of a book.
The invention disclosed in U.S. Ser. No. 07/746,911 and incorporated herein comprises a number of individual cards containing information and compiled in a particular sequence. The individual cards are assembled to make up a deck of cards, and the deck is joined together by a fastener such as a rivet or the like extending through aligned holes formed adjacent a corner of each card. This construction permits fanning the deck to display a particular card containing information of interest to a person using the deck.
The individual cards for the decks described in the aforementioned copending application were prepared by choosing the information desired for the front and back faces of each card, and then printing that information on the respective sides of each card making up a deck on a particular topic. Each such deck has n cards in any specific embodiment and the entire deck thus consists of 2n faces.
For reasons of economical and practical production, such information decks are prepared in commercial quantities by laying out and printing a number of individual card faces on one surface of a sheet of card stock that is many times larger than an individual card face. The card faces printed on the front surface of each card-stock sheet can be for different cards in the set, or can be multiple copies of the same card face, or can be some mixture thereof. The back faces for those cards then are printed on the other surface of the card stock in registry with the card faces initially printed on the front surface. After both surfaces of the card-stock sheets are thus printed, the individual cards are cut from the sheets. Those individual cards then are assembled into one or more decks in the desired sequence of information printed on the card faces, and the cards are drilled to accommodate the rivet that secures together the cards of a deck.
When manufacturing decks of cards in the manner described above, it became apparent that the assembled decks displayed a visible gap or split separating the deck into two or more groups of cards. This split is unsightly and gives an unfavorable commercial impression of an inferior or poorly-fabricated product not suitable for marketing to the public.